Yeah, I’m not sure what other translators use meditation as a translation of jhāna/dhyāna, but for myself that was a stand-in word for the time being while I mull over what to do with dhyāna in Buddhist texts. I finally decided recently to not translate it. It’ll begin to appear transliterated as I re-edit what’s been released already. To me, it’s such a specific and technical term that any translation is liable to be misleading. The word, whichever word we choose, is a label that stands for a stock definition that’s found throughout Buddhist texts. It might as well be a loan word.
I’m considering the same for samādhi given that concentration is such a unpoetic mouthful and doesn’t really apply to meditation in English (though it can get close). Immersion doesn’t get any closer to it for me, which I think is confusing to general readers. Any comfortably related word can be redefined to stand for a technical meaning if a person gets accustomed to it, but I think we might as well use loan words when English is lacking good parallels.
Except when you teach orally!!! I do know you try though you are easily led astray by Pali geeks like VK!
As much as I’m occasionally confounded by too much Pali when I listen to you teach, I’m not so sure about this as a strict principle for translated texts.
I feel like there are many instances where you can’t justify a single word as a direct translation, or that the term stands for such a broad and particularly Buddhist concept that an English word just won’t do.
For example samadhi - I’m well conditioned to believe that stillness is the closest English term, but if you said that to someone who wasn’t a long term listener of you and Ajahn Brahm then they aren’t going to come close to understanding the depth of what it means.
However, if it is left untranslated the reader still won’t come close to understanding it unless they have studied a bit more or had the benefit of good teachers.
So I guess what I am saying is that for a beginner, it is great to read the single English word, but for someone who has been around even for a little while it might be better for it to be untranslated because reading the Pali word will import a great deal more into the reading.
The question then is ‘who reads English translations of vinaya?’ Complete beginners? People who have been listening to dhamma teachings for some time and who will have a bit more conceptual understanding?
Another good example!
Yes!
When you say this, are you talking about a list of synonyms or other kinds of repetitions? As much as I love brevity, and I was specifically trained at law school to aim for this, isn’t the purpose of those lists of synonyms to aid in understanding a concept more accurately? Sometimes a single word can be misinterpreted where a list of synonyms will narrow it down a bit.
If you meant the other kind of repetition that is strictly for memorisation/oral transmission purposes then I’m a big fan of ditching it.
Yay!
Ugh!
Yay!
I like this idea very much. So much, in fact, that I’ve been doing that for a certain book you are ‘writing’ on the 37 A2A (short working title: ‘Just Remember Kindness’).
Me too. I almost always go back and forth with the Bhikkhu Bodhi books, especially with @Sujato translations.
Actually, I like that they are all different because reading multiple translations gives me a broader understanding of what the sutta means. Even when they contradict each other it is helpful because then it is a bit of a red flag that you should take extra care to reflect on the meaning and keep an open mind until you see it for yourself.
@Brahmali I am sooo curious about how this was done in the Buddha’s time. I’ve only just started studying this rule and understand that it is largely gotten around by declaring the extra robes as cloth for requisites, but to me that just seems like a sneaky trick to get around the rule rather than something the Buddha allowed.
Yes, I can relate to this. A problem is that we have a great variety in potential readers. When you decide how to translate, you first have to decide on the audience. Bhante Sujato and I decided early on that our translations should be accessible to newcomers. The idea is to give a smooth and straightforward reading experience to anyone who comes across these texts.
For more advanced readers, SuttaCentral gives display options that make it easy to check the Pali word behind any English rendering. Then there is the lookup tool which is very handy to get a deeper appreciation of Pali terms. To my mind, SuttaCentral strikes a nice balance that makes it suitable for readers of any kind of proficiency.
I mean both. Yes, a list of synonyms is “to aid in understanding a concept more accurately”. This works well in English. The problem with Pali is that our understanding of terms is often quite approximate. When we have a series of synonyms, it helps us pin down the overall meaning, but we will often lack a precise understanding of the meaning of the individual terms. Translating each term as if we haver a very precise grasp of the meaning is what Bhante @Sujato has called false precision. In other words, we are rendering the text as if we understand it better than we actually do. Sometimes collapsing a series of adjectives into a single word is actually an honest reflection of the limits of our knowledge.
They would probably have washed one robe while wearing the other two. There is some evidence that the three robes were roughly the same size. But the monastics also had other cloth requisites that could be worn. The nuns had bathing robes. Both monks and nuns often had sheets that could be used temporarily to cover up.
On the landing page of suttacentral, you’ve all done a great job in introducing a newcomer to an overview, ways to get started and a comprehensive index and glossary of terminology.
What about a very basic, concise introductory short list of some commonly found Pali terms which are difficult to translate and are crucial to understand correctly so to help develop right view? For instance, the word samadhi can cause lots of meditative anguish if misunderstood. Using the framework of the four noble truths and the eightfold path could cover many of these terms and at the same time help a newcomer discover what the Buddha’s core teachings are all about.
@NgXinZhao it’s 37 Aids to Awakening, and Ajahn Brahmali. He’s not actually ‘writing’ it though, I’m putting it together from a transcription of his retreat
I do know you try though you are easily led astray by Pali geeks like VK!